This invention relates generally to the art of temperature measurement and more particularly to the art of the measurement and display of the temperature differential across bilateral areas of the skin of a living organism in a clinical examination.
The temperature of tissue near the skin surface of a human or animal is known to be higher than normal when the tissue is experiencing spasm, bruising, or other such stress. As a result, the temperature of the adjacent skin surface will also be higher than normal. Therefore, local aberrations in skin surface temperature are sometimes indicative of an inflammation in the underlying tissue. Chiropractors have long utilized this phenomenon in clinical examinations. In particular, neural imbalances resulting from spinal misalignment can be diagnosed based on the differential of the temperature of a skin surface area near the spine on one side and the temperature of the mirror image area on the other side of the spine.
A number of devices have been introduced over the years to assist chiropractors in this temperature differential diagnosis. While these prior art devices have proven successful to some degree, they have significant drawbacks.
The primary shortcoming of the prior art has been in the design of the temperature probes. These probes required the chiropractor to bear against a patient's skin with such pressure that heat-pattern-distorting chafe marks remained after each differential reading. Thus, the accuracy of subsequent readings was negatively affected. A further disadvantage of much of the prior art is that upon completion of the examination, the clinician had no permanent record of the readings. The absence of a chart-type record undoubtedly has caused many nuances of the differential reading to go unnoticed. Additionally, the design of the probes of some prior art devices made cleaning difficult.
Some of the more recent prior art is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,166,451 issued to Salera and U.S. Pat. No. 4,347,854 issued to Gosline et al.